Local students join letter-writing campaign to support Boston Marathon runners

Students from Westwood, Milton, Quincy, and Boston are participating in the Run Again Project, an effort inspired by the tragedy at last year's Bostion Marathon and the resilience the city and state showed in its aftermath.

Students from Westwood, Milton, Quincy, and Boston are taking part in a letter-writing campaign called the Run Again Project.

The project was launched by Kathleen Ready of Westwood and her brother Brian Kelley. Ready wrote the song “I Will Run Again,” which was recorded at Keep the Edge Studios on March 25 by students from Milton Pierce Middle School. She said the project began when she met a marathon runner at Guarino Pastry Shop in Norwood the Friday after last year’s Boston Marathon.

Ready talked to the runner about her training and what she experienced, how she had been unable to complete the course after two explosives went off near the finish line.

“It was just a devastating event for her,” Ready said. “My heart went out to her. She said she didn’t think she was going run again after what happened.”

Ready hugged the runner, who told her that she would run again. She then went home and wrote a poem, and adapted it into a song. It was later performed at a music festival in Milton, which her brother helped organize.

“We thought it should be heard in the city, and we went to another level and the letter-writing campaign came from it,” said Ready.

Ready said some of the letters are very emotional. A Milton high school student wrote about her brother, who died last fall. The two had been at the last marathon together.

“She shares how he protected her then and how she struggles now in the wake of his death,” Ready wrote in an e-mail. “She tells how she asked her dad the question, ‘How do people run again?’ "

Another letter tells of a young lifeguard who saved the life of a child, but couldn't save the life of the grandparent with her who had a heart attack in the water. Ready said this teen almost gave up being a lifeguard, until she realized that if she hadn't been one, the girl may have died too.

“She learned how to start again by moving through her fears and she tells the runners she is proud of them too,” said Kathleen.